How do you start a career in sustainability? Senfal shared their view on this at the Sustainability Career Event.

Last week we presented how Senfal has started up and how to get a career in sustainability in general at the Sustainability Career Event in Utrecht. This national event has the purpose to give students more insights in how to get a career in sustainability, no matter what background a student has. The event is organized by Sustainable Motion, an organization that stimulates sustainable innovation with young talented people, and Morgen (meaning Tomorrow), a student network for sustainability in higher education.

For the opening of this event, three speakers were asked to tell about their jobs in sustainability and how they’ve gotten there. From Senfal Derek de Rie was asked to speak and he told from the approach of starting a company in sustainability. How do you get such an idea, how do you handle all kinds of issues you come across when you start a new company with new ideas, and how are you able to make a profit out of sustainability?

Networking

The students, with all different backgrounds and different origins, were mostly interested in how to link their background to a job in sustainability. What is possible with the skills someone has and how do you get in touch with the right people? The bridge towards thinking commercially and starting with selling an idea opened the eyes, but still questions as ‘how to convince the government in countries as Abu Dhabi, where the whole country lives on oil and gas’, is a challenging unanswered question.

At least we did our best to convince students that there is a career in sustainability, in a wider range of possibilities than you might think of in the first place. And maybe we will welcome one of them in the coming years at our team!

You can also watch the aftermovie here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K77Tl4C1PI0